What did you learn about your team, yourself and marketing? 

Working with my team, I felt that every one of us were responsible, hardworking, and just perfect. From recent team projects, I was already worn out by free-riders and negative arguments within my past groups. Yet, with this group I had the best experience of doing a group project. I also learned about myself that I love marketing and perhaps will choose marketing as my major, since I had great fun in this class. Not only from this project, but also from the whole course, I learned so much about marketing that my thoughts on marketing prior to taking this course is now completely gone and replaced with fresh new knowledge and creative ideas to continue studying about this field.

What skills did you enhance or develop, if any? 

I was able to enhance my skills of cooperating with team members and supporting them. I also was able to develop skills for speaking out to initiate different ideas and discussions, which were the skills I wanted to strengthen more.

What would you do differently next time? 

I would pay more attention to the editing part of the finished copy of the assignment, since our group was taken marks off for a few mistakes on that. Also, I want to enhance my video making skills to ensure that I have fun time with similar projects and be able to add more complex effects in the video.

What are you top takeaways? 

My top takeaways are learning how to come up with new marketing strategies by taking what a company has currently and developing more upon it. Despite the company we chose had some negative parts in current situations, they were not just somethings to throw away. We creatively used those to enhance the strengths of the company and twist them to offer a new approach to succeed.

Target launched off its first new stores in Canada this month. As expected, Target is experiencing heavy demand from new Canadian consumers who are curious and eager to visit the newly opened Target stores. One of the customers who visited the newly opened store says, “80% of the racks were empty and hooks in the change rooms were already ripped out of the wall”(Shaw). Continuing its successful marketing strategy prior to opening, as Tracy summarized in her blog’s post “Target Meets Canada”, Target used product placement as one of its promotional strategy at its opening event in Toronto, by inviting famous celebrities to the launch party and have them say “I love Target!”. See video.

Also, in addition, Target went hand-in-hand with Roots, the beloved clothing brand of Canada, to initiate a cross-promotional strategy to further reach into the Canadian consumers. With Root’s already existing brand value, especially favoured by those with patriotism and preference towards national products, Target will certainly gain potential to compete against its rivals, such as Walmart and The Bay.

From its beginning, Target prepared for its launching in Canada with great effort and energy by conducting extensive market researches on Canadian market and having pre-opening promotional strategies, such as pervasive marketing. Even post-opening and also for its future new openings throughout Canada, Target is armed with perfect gears to win the hearts of Canadian consumers. There is only excitement left for Target’s future parade down the streets of Canada.

Sources:

Shaw, Hollie. “‘We definitely were slammed’: Target hoping new store openings will ease inventory issues”. Financial Post. Retrieved from <http://business.financialpost.com/2013/03/18/we-definitely-were-slammed-target-hoping-new-store-openings-will-ease-inventory-issues/>.

Since the release of Galaxy S3 and Note 2, Samsung has been striving with their best effort to win over the hearts of today’s smartphone users, especiallythe Apple’s Iphone users. Spending over $402 million in U.S. in their marketing for last year’s Galaxy S3, Samsung’s Promotion part of their marketing mix is finally seeing the light of success.

In their strategy of promoting the core smartphone products, Samsung chose to approach the consumers with the feeling of familiarity, friendliness, and freshness. Instead of bombing the consumers with ads filled with information about the phone’s technological specs, Samsung created episodes of video advertisements that each presents a unique feature of their smartphone. For instance, there are videos about NFC feature used to download music off of a poster, S voice feature for voice command, and Burst Mode feature to take motion pictures. It’s easy, quick explanation of one feature, without tedious reading of lines and lines of information written in words that only tech experts can understand.

The blog post written by Brad Reed tells how successful Samsung’s marketing strategy is in contrast to that of LG and HTC. The most significant point that sets Samsung and others apart is the promotion strategy of how information about the device is carried to the receiver. In the process of decoding, the receiver can fail due to the lack of necessary knowledge required to understand particular content. In this case, the words such as “next generation quad core processor” and “2GB of RAM”(Reed), hinder the consumers from fully understanding how amazing the new features are for the smartphones they are buying. Samsung made it simple and concise to the point that people, even those in their seniority, can quickly understand the complex technological abilities of the Samsung phones, in result, shortening the length of decoding process in communicating with the consumers.

Agreeing to Brad Reed’s post about Samsung’s marketing strategy, if Samsung continues to introduce new revolutionary smartphones that are much in advance that Apple’s smartphones in both technology and marketing, it will definitely be able to overcome the domination of Apple in smartphone market.

It is not too much to say that the 21th century is the decade of the Korean Wave. Korean Wave refers to the “phenomenon of Korean entertainment and popular culture rolling over the world with pop music, TV dramas, and movies”(Korea.Net). Psy’s Gangnam Style is a perfect example of Korean Wave sweeping over the world, which brought together millions of people with a song that is not even understandable by most of the audience.

The majority of Asia is now dominated by the craze of K-pop Idols, who are young, attractive singers from South Korea. From Korean dramas to Korean cosmetics, anything that is ‘made in Korea’ is the thing in Asia. With the number consumers from Europe rapidly increasing, Korean culture is gaining its power in world market. See Korean Wave in Paris, France.

It seems that the consumers of Korean product, culture, and media are considering Korean celebrities as aspirational reference group, the social reference group in which consumers want to belong and relate to. Also, the low level of loyalty of Southeast Asian consumers make them vulnerable to new trends and ideas, which increases the attractiveness of Korean product.

This is an amazing opportunity for Korean companies to ride the Korean Wave and expand into the international market to gain their brand value and penetrate the fortress of North American brands that have been dominating for decades in the world market. Today, Samsung is releasing its revolutionary smartphone, Galaxy S4, an upgraded version of last year’s Galaxy S3 that competed furiously with Apple’s Iphone 5. As one of the components of their STP strategy, Samsung can definitely target towards the consumer segments in Asia and Europe, who have been exposed to and are interested in Korean culture. Using famous K-pop celebrities as their models to market and promote the new Galaxy S4, they may be able to overcome Apple’s dominance in smartphone industry.

Citation:

Korea.net. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.korea.net/Government/Current-Affairs/Korean-Wave.

Coca Cola initiated its “Coming Together” advertisement project this January by releasing a new video commercial, Coming Together ad of Coca Cola. This project was aimed to raise awareness about the issue of global obesity and other health issues caused by modern day eating habits. As one of the leading beverage brand in the world, Coca Cola talks about how people should act to reduce and stop obesity.

In the commercial, Coca Cola rolls out its endless portfolio of its beverage products, talking about how they have reduced calories and sizes of its sugary drinks, such as Coca Cola, Fuze, and many more. It also mentions about their actions to reduce child obesity by replacing high-calorie drinks by low-calorie drinks throughout the schools in North America.

Is Coca Cola truly concerned about the global health issues and willing to take serious actions to reduce them? Is Coca Cola taking responsibility of causing global obesity as one of the most popular soda brands that are consumed daily by those who have obesity? This video, under the veil of Coca Cola’s fabricated concern about global health, is simply a “damage control” of what it has done through years and years of their production of what poses the most threat to our health. Really, Coca Cola is saying, “We have reduced the sizes of the cans of sugary, high-calorie drinks for those who want to be less fat, but still, if  you want the whole 2L bottle of coke, then its right beside it”. It’s also saying, “Are we really responsible for your obesity just because we offered you a choice of drinking what makes you obese, or is it you that is responsible for not exercising and being lazy?”.

The reaction of those who saw the commercial reveals that Coca Cola has done wrong. People are saying that this project is not a true responsible action of Coca Cola, it is merely another golden advertisement to increase its sales and brand awareness. One of the Youtube viewers even say “The world would be a better place without Coca Cola”. Also, a consumer-revised, Honest Version of Coming Together was made by one of Youtube vloggers, that actually tells people “Do not drink Coca Cola” to those who are in risk of having obesity.

The new commercial of Coca Cola is not a good example of how brands should take social responsibilities about what they have done. This is not going to influence people about the world health issues, or decrease the number of obesity.

Mercedes Benz. The ultimate symbol of wealth, luxury, fame. As one of the top most expensive, luxurious, favoured automobile brand, Mercedes Benz has been ruling the market for luxury city cars, attracting mostly the market segment aged late 30 to 50’s businessmen who love to spend their money on their rides. However, with its competition, such as Audi and BMW, expanding to reach new segment that is younger and more modern, Benz is now tightened up to its throat to launch a new line of car that is competitive enough to overcome the new Audi A3 and BMW 4-Serie. To reach further into the younger generation, Benz is “exploiting the power of social media“, such as Twitter and Facebook.

The new Mercedes Benz CLA is lower in price and smaller in size, clearly showing that it is targeted towards a younger generation who has less money to spend for cars. The design also signifies the fresh, sharp look of a young professional who just step out of his internship and ready to do some business. Also, the price, estimated to start at $30,000, offers an opportunity to those who never had Benz on their list of car brands to consider for their new purchase, expanding Benz’s target segment in both age and average income size. The new tv commercial of CLA shows that by using a young actor as the main person in the video and showing how his life can be better by riding a CLA. Also, the famous celebrities, such as Usher and Kate Upton, are featured in the commercial to relate more with those who are aged 20 to 30.

Despite that this new market development strategy may be a harm to its brand image as a high-class, luxury car only for rich people, I believe this is Mercedes Benz’s great adaptation to the changing world and market that will sufficiently draw in new consumers who were never reached before and increase the influence of its brand in the market. As a  member of the young generation, I was also attracted by the changed design and price of the new CLA, and perhaps I will consider buying it as my first car.

What is Ethic? In a plain dictionary, the word “ethic” means a system of moral principles or the rules of conduct recognized in respect of a particular class of human actions. In everyday life, we try to be ethical. We try to show, talk, and act in the boundaries of what is said or thought to be moral. Aside from the dictionary definition, simply saying, being ethical is making actions that do not disrespect or harm others physically and psychologically in areas of their thoughts, culture, beliefs, and nature.

A perfect example of unethical marketing is the Storm Sandy Sale conducted by a global clothing company, American Apparel. At the end of October 2012, Storm Sandy hit eastern United States, resulting in a number of financial losses, injuries, and death. In this time of devastation, American Apparel sent out emails to their customers announcing about its latest “Sandy Sale,” suggesting to shop at their stores, “In case you’re bored during the storm”. People who saw the poster for the sale enraged at the lack of common sense and consideration about the victims of the hurricane. Many of their customers expressed their willingness to boycott American Apparel on social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook.

In their senseless and thoughtless business marketing, American Apparel simply did not think outside from its own gains. To those who were mourning for their hurricane-blown house, a missing child, and the death of their loved ones, American Apparel’s marketing was a devil’s smirk. Its immoral action completely disrespected and harmed people’s feelings. This case of unethical marketing displays the need for thoughtful consideration about the current situations and audience of the marketing and shows the significance of what is morally right before seeking personal gains from a business.

Link to the news: Marketing Ethics, American Apparel & Hurricane Sandy

Sources:

Watson, Paul. “Marketing Ethics, American Apparel & Hurricane Sandy”. Bostinno. Nov 5 2012. Jan 19 2012. <http://bostinno.com/channels/marketing-ethics-american-apparel-hurricane-sandy/>

“Ethics”. Dictionary.com. Jan 19 2012. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ethics?s=t>